I was in St. Louis a couple weeks ago and a friend and I happened upon an unpleasant odor in the air. He looked at me, started laughing, and said, "It smells like Iowa." Everyone who comes to visit for, at least, a weekend, will, inevitably get a whiff of downtown/East Village Des Moines.
That smell makes fodder for jokes, but it's, also, being taken seriously. Last night, the Des Moines City Council approved money to fund a study of the stench. The City is hiring a group out of Illinois to do some research.
The company hired to do the research will test the compounds in the air to figure out what the stench actually is. No timeline on the research has been released.